[15] Essay xvi.
[16] Decisions being given against the parties is no proof of uncorruptness; it is always the party who loses his suit that complains; the gainer receives the price of his bribe, and is silent.
[17] The exactions of his servants appear to have been very great; their indulgence in every kind of extravagance, and the lavish profuseness of his own expenses, were the principal causes of his ruin. Mallet relates that one day, during the investigation into his conduct, the Chancellor passed through a room where several of his servants were sitting; as they arose from their seats to greet him, “Sit down, my masters,” exclaimed he, “your rise hath been my fall.”
[18] Essay xi.
[19] Macaulay’s Essays.
[20] He was not, as has been erroneously supposed, stripped of his titles of nobility; this was proposed; but it was negatived by the majority formed by means of the bishops.
[21] The Prince of Wales, afterwards Charles the First, was before he ascended the throne the patron of Bacon, who said of him in his will, “my most gracious sovereign, who ever when he was prince was my patron.”
[22] The Seasons.
[23] Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England.
[24] Bracton is one of the earliest writers of English law. He flourished in the thirteenth century. The title of his work is De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliæ, first printed in 1569.